Lone Survivor: The history of Zaeed Massani
by thebluninja
Summary: For the Aria's Afterlife "Under-served Character" contest. A look back at the history of Zaeed Massani, from picking up his first assault rifle pre-Contact to the end of the Reaper war. Selected in memory of Robin Sachs, RIP. Lots of swearing, which you should expect from Zaeed Goddamn Massani.
1. Chapter 1

_Author's Note: Robin Sachs was announced dead yesterday. I had the thought of a few titles for Zaeed-central fics, but I hadn't really put together any ideas for what to write. The few Zaeed fics I've seen here on ff have all been Normandy-era, and while I do intend to get there by the end, the start of this fic is his earlier life - pre Shanxi. Zaeed's old enough to be in Hackett's generation, and while the wikia timeline doesn't list a birthday for him, I'm assuming he was born the same year as Anderson, 2137._

* * *

_April 4, 2155_

"I, Zaeed Massani, hereby pledge to support the Systems Alliance. I will support and defend the Constitution, the citizens of the Alliance, and obey the lawful orders of Parliament and the officers appointed over me." The scrawny hand was held aloft in a cool Sydney morning, the sharp tang of salt air wafting over the park and the newly refurbished opera house. News cameras floated and flashed and broadcast the images across several solar systems.

"Today, the Alliance marks a new era in human expansion in the galaxy. Arcturus station is being constructed to hold a true center for humanity, freed from the shackles of the past, building our path to a greater tomorrow." Prime Minister Oswald droned on, while Zaeed and the other two hundred recruits from AusZealand stood and swayed slightly at their best attempt at attention. _I wish this moron would shut his goddamn mouth_, he thought, feeling his stomach rumbling. _We've already been out here for three goddamn hours. Send us to basic training, already. At least then we'll get to eat!_

It took another forty-five minutes, with two other politicians speaking before some cranky-looking admiral finally wrapped things up. "All right recruits, form it up! Fifty of you to each bus. Last bus filled has a hundred pushups before chow time!" Their recruiter shouted, her voice shrill, and the media cameras got plenty more shots of the men and women, dressed in recruit jumpsuits, as they all turned and ran in formation to the waiting vehicles.

Simple MREs were distributed on the vehicles as they trundled along slowly to the airport, and they all scarfed their food before their instructor could remember the thread of PT. Once there, they boarded a plane, spending a painfully long seven hours in flight before landing in North America. They disembarked, milling around uncertainly while their instructors vanished to confer.

Zaeed took in the landscape. Flat plans, with mountains just barely visible on opposite sides. The smell of shit was heavy in the air, and he could see what looked like corn fields off in one direction. "What a shithole," he muttered.

"You can say that again," one of the other recruits said, and he glanced at the asian guy. "I'm Jimmy. From Brisbane."

"Zaeed, Sydney." He hawked and spat into one of the padeyes on the flight line. "I thought my neighborhood in the slums smelled bad."

Jimmy cracked a smile. "You can say that again. Why'd you join up? I just can't wait to get off Earth, and this seemed like the best way."

"It beats sitting and squatting on unemployment like the rest of the goddamn losers in my neighborhood. Nobody wants to hire a kid who's half sand nigger," he growled, letting some of his frustration show.

Raising an eyebrow, the other man waved a hand as he sought for the right words. "Half Arabic, huh? I don't suppose you're, ah,"

"Religious? Fanatical? Allahu fucking akbar and all that crap?" He spat again. "Do I look like a goddamn religious nut to you?"

"When it comes to your rifle, you had _better fucking believe in God_, Massani!" the shout from right behind his ear was enough to make him, and Jimmy (who'd seen the instructor approaching), jump. "Because if He's not looking out for you, _I will make you fucking eat your rifle and beg for seconds!_" Their instructor, whose nametag read _Kahoku_, pointed a fierce finger in the young man's face. "Fall the _fuck_ in, recruits! That means five _fucking_ minutes ago, you maggots!"

Once everyone was in formation, they did pushups, jumping jacks, situps, more pushups, and finally sprinted the mile-long runway before being marched through the base to their barracks. Unlike the balmy fall day, it was already over 40C, and the entire company was drenched in sweat when they arrived. "When you hear your name called by your barracks leader, you will fall in, strip, and shower! There will be ten minutes from the last name called to be showered, dressed, and ready for instructions! _Do you fucking understand me?_"

"Sir, yes sir!" came the unanimous if ragged response, and the names were rattled off fast and furious. Zaeed wasted no time, jogging past his assigned instructor and into the open bay. Bunk beds, stacked three tall, had name stencils taped to their feet, and he stopped at his long enough to pull out a towel and the flip-flops. The barracks were segregated by gender, _ain't that a goddamn pity_, and he wasn't going to waste time being flustered in front of forty utter strangers.

He wasn't the first one out of the showers and dressed, but he was far from the last. When their ten minutes was up, several people were still in the showers. Being the military, they were then forced to do more exercise for every person and every minute they were past the deadline. Some grumbling could already be heard aimed at the slow ones. _They'd better unfuck themselves right goddamn quick_, he thought, meeting Jimmy's eyes across the aisle.

"Alright, listen up! This is Charlie barracks! When you hear an order for Charlie barracks, you obey right the fuck away. Charlie barracks is part of Golden battalion! When you hear an order for Golden battalion, you obey how?"

"Sir, right the fuck away sir!" Zaeed's voice carried louder than anyone else in the room, and he watched his instructor, Carroway, march her petite self right up to him.

"Massani! Why'd you join my Alliance Marines?" she shouted up at his face.

"Sir, because I'm not a goddamn loser, sir!" he replied quickly.

"Right now, Massani, you _are_ a goddamn loser! What you have is the _potential_ to be a genuine asskicking Alliance Marine! How are you going to do that?"

"Sir, by doing everything you tell me to, sir!" he responded again.

"Good job, Massani. Everyone else, give me one pushup." He watched as the rest of his barracks dropped, did a single nose-to-the-deck pushup, and popped back to their feet. "When I get the right fucking answer out of you, it's one pushup. When I get the wrong answer," she whirled away and stalked over to another recruit, "how many pushups will you be doing, Snipes?"

"Sir, fifty pushups, sir?" he replied, nervously. _Goddamn idiot, there is no right answer to that question_, Zaeed thought miserably.

"Fifty pushups! You trying to one-up Massani? Trying to prove you deserve to get your balls back on the first day of recruit training?" She scowled at him, daring an answer, before moving back to the far end of the bay. "No answer is a wrong answer, Snipes! Fifty pushups for everyone!" Keeping his groan purely mental, Zaeed did another fifty pushups, though his arms were already trembling and burning. "What time is it right now?"

Jimmy beat him to the punch. "Sir, current time is 1437, sir!"

"Right answer, Jia. One pushup! You will all take an inventory of your lockers. At 1500, I will be walking through with another instructor and inspecting your lockers. If one item is out of place … _stand by_." Without another word, Carroway straight-armed the door open, vanishing into the office at the rear of the bay.

"Three months of this?" Jimmy said, sotto voce.

"Piece of cake," Zaeed replied. He glanced at the other two men sharing his rack of bunk beds, then bent down to open the locker underneath the mattress. He'd do a solid year of this if he had to, for a steady paycheck, regular meals, and the chance to learn some real skills.


	2. Chapter 2

Zaeed stood proudly in ranks in Armstrong colony, listening to some Alliance admiral drone on. His dress uniform was sharply pressed, shoes shining brightly, back rigidly straight. He had put on some muscle, enough that their two weeks of low-grav training out of the moon's surface hadn't taken it back off. He was still thin, but it was wiry hard muscle. Jimmy, a couple of people off to his right, had bulked up enough to look like a Chinese weight lifter.

It took another hour for the speechifying to get done, and Golden Battalion was pulled aside, back to their barracks. Some of the faces had changed, as recruits left or were pushed back to re-do portions of the training, and new recruits pushed backwards into their group were integrated. What had started at nearly two hundred people was down to a slimmer one-forty.

They lined up smartly by their bunks, as the instructors walked down the line, handing out their new assignments. Everyone, of course, was going on to further training, but the one-page printouts gave their eventual duty assignments. Friends and enemies alike were scanning and comparing postings. "Massani, looks like I got vehicle maintenance mechanic, Shanxi colony. How about you?"

Zaeed read it slowly, making sure of all the details. "Huh. Armory detail, infantry company, Shanxi." He looked up. "At least they sent you to the right goddamn colony, you'll fit right in."

Jimmy laughed, clapping him on the shoulder. "C'mon, Zaeed, it's not that bad. The place is supposed to be the shining star of human colonization." The last was said with only a tiny bit of sarcasm. "Would you rather be guarding ice experiments on Titan?"

"You've got a point," he sighed. "Still, tonight on liberty, I get to pick the food. I'll be spending five months after armory training eating your goddamn food."

"Fine, fine, shawarma it is," the burly asian jested.

* * *

Armory training was a blizzard of information on a hundred different weapon types. Despite the discovery of mass effect fields, the art of mass effect weapons was still in relative infancy, and Alliance armories still stocked dozens of caliber ammunition, as well as explosives and heavy weapons. Over the course of six months, Zaeed and a dozen other student recruits learned enough to match nearly any caliber by eye. Two more weeks were spent on repairing and maintaining mass effect weaponry, which at least had the benefit of being predictably similar.

When it ended, Zaeed read his orders for the umpteenth time, staring specifically at the dates involved. Today was Feb 1, 2156, overall a fairly unimportant day, filled with no goddamn historical significance as far as he was concerned. His date of departure, however, was Feb 15, 2156, leaving him with two weeks to spend in Antalya with nothing to do.

Most of his fellow soldiers were, right now, on their way either to airports or spaceports, to spend as much time as possible with family, or beginning a bar crawl that would last them two weeks until someone in the local constabulary tossed them onto the scheduled shuttle for Shanxi. He had nothing against alcohol, of course, but it seemed like a hell of a waste to spend the next two weeks utterly blotto. Not to mention the impact it would have on his tiny but burgoning bank account, filled with more credits he'd held in the last two years before he enlisted.

Zaeed had neither desire nor motive to return to Sydney. His dad was, as Jimmy had so eloquently put it, one of those "hopeless religious fools who reject scientific proof to cling to the daydreams of men dead two thosuand years." His mom he hadn't seen in ten years, and good riddance to her too. He sat on the bed in his room, staring blankly at the wall as he considered what to do next.

On a whim, he left the room, heading for the lounge down the hall and picking an empty computer. His class might have graduated, but there were still two hundred other military students attending courses on various types of weapons and mayhem. He searched Antalya Tourist Attractions, blinking in surprise at the outright blizzard of results that came up.

Many of them were steeped in historical significance: ruins dating back to Byzantine or Roman times, art galleries and libraries of replicated books, guided tours from ground, air, and sea. "I have no idea what I'm bloody doing," he muttered to himself, drawing a startled glance from a woman plotting the explosive radius of varying types of rockets.

Picking one at random, he downloaded directions and left the base, catching the local bus routes until he was standing on the outskirts of the city. An amphitheater rose before him, stone walls stretching away, and he paid a half dozen credits for entrance and a map printout. The amphiteather was impressive, if you took in how much pure sweat and muscle effort that went into building it, but it was easily dwarfed by virtually anything accomplished since the invention of the boiler or the combustion engine.

Still, he strode up the steep steps all the way to the top, standing on the top row and gazing down at the stage below, where paid actors tried to talk more tourists into professional pictures in costume, or hawked knick-knacks made just strong enough to fall apart after they got home. Scoffing, he unfolded the map and glanced at it. _Huh, there's more ruins up the hill from here. I wonder what a nymphoreum is?_

He strode down the steps with a purpose, leaving the amphitheater and taking the dirt path up the hill behind it. Few of the tourists were up this way, the rough path, disorderly vegetation, and unchecked insects enough to keep most of them down below at the small touch of civilization. It was a situation that suited Zaeed fine.

He strode through the crumbling walls of a cathedral, two walls still standing tall with only hints of what had been a second floor, and past a stone-lined ditch that had carried water before being choked thick with thorny bushes. Arriving at what the map said was a "nymphoreum", he looked around, finally finding a faded metal sign.

"Well ain't that a goddamn kick in the pants," he muttered. "It's just a fountain area. I was hoping to find the ruins of a roman whorehouse." Scowling, he looked at his map again. He spent the next three hours poking around in the ruins, avoiding the few other tourists who climbed up there, before finally returning to the barracks.

Sitting in the same spot on his bed, he sighed. _Thirteen more goddamn days of this_, he grumbled to himself.


	3. Chapter 3

_Author's Note: Jessie finally appears! Along side - could this be a tragically doomed love interest backstory? Why yes, tropers, I believe it is!_

* * *

Zaeed set the stack of folders down smartly on the desk, drawing a loud sigh from the man behind it. "Corporal, you work too hard," he complained.

"Somebody's got to, Staff Sergeant," he replied without rancor. "After the whole drunk tear-up last weekend when three squads decided to go snipe hunting."

The older marine sighed dramatically, levering himself out of the chair. "Massani. Unless a new batch of drug runners set up shop in the hills, _nothing ever happens_. Go to the gym or something, holy fuck." He ambled out the door. "I'm gonna get a burger. Don't let anyone start a snipe hunt without me."

He gave a second-head salute – that is, made a salute with his hand over his dick – and plopped down behind the desk himself. He closed out the porn extranet searches and pulled up the armory database, updating the information, though he logged the spent ammunition as "Training Exercises" and not "Waste/Fraud" despite the greater accuracy of the second.

His pocket comp beeped at him, and he pulled it out to answer a call from Jimmy. "Zaeed, brother! Still wasting your time at work?"

He cracked a smile. "It's not even 1300, you chink. What's happening in the vehicle pool?"

"Not much. Was thinking about taking this old Tiger out for a spin," he grinned, "drop by the main colony, pick up chicks. Figured I'd see if you wanted to introduce any of the local girls to the suicide bomb in your pants."

"The only bomb in my pants will be from the chili I just had at lunch," he shot back. "When you leaving?"

"I dunno, an hour or so? Need to gas up the old broad, load some shells in just for fun shooting at rabbits, that kind of thing." Jimmy shrugged, gesturing to the armored truck behind him, a twenty-year old relic before the colony was founded.

"Sounds good. Gimme twenty to finish filing my goddamn paperwork, and I'll meet you over there."

"It's a date then," came the response in an annoying sing-song, before the call cut off.

Zaeed, still chuckling, shook his head as he finished typing everything in. So far, over the last year, he'd managed to completely cut out three useless calibers, getting replacements either in the new mass effect weapons, or combining everyone up on 7.62-chambered weapons. He took one of the new assault rifles, playing with it for a minute to make it unfold and compact.

"What the hell, maybe I can impress some dumb piece of jailbait," he muttered to himself. Whistling to himself, he stepped out of the armory, locking up the building, and striding to his barracks. It was a still warm fall day, unseasonably warm to hear the locals bitch about it, but he thought it was perfect. It took a few minutes for him to change into some cargo pants and a tank top, tucking the folded assault rifle into one of the large pockets on the leg.

Armed with a wallet full of Alliance credit slips (the colony still lagged behind in electronic banking), he headed over to the vehicle pool, stepping inside the open garage door and nearly ending up run over. "What the fuck, Jimmy?" he shouted as the other man waved out the window. "It doesn't count if she puts out from fear of getting goddamn run over," he groused, climbing into the other front seat.

He waved it off, kicking it back into gear and rolling out the door. Six wheels, shiny armor plates with tiny removable firing slots, and a messy pile of blankets to help pad the seats. "Relax, just driving up in this will impress the women. The ones I don't run over, anyway," he grinned. "I've got a couple on the line already. We're going to pick them up near the terraforming center, then head out near the firing range, let them feel the guns fire."

"With your reputation, that won't take too goddamn long," Zaeed retorted, pulling out a pack of gum.

"It's ok, Massani, at least I know what a girl is for. You'll probably spend two hours trying to size her chamber for the right caliber." Waving a hand in acknowledgement of the superior insult, he hawked and spat the gum out the window, narrowly missing the wall of the sentry gatehouse.

"Ever think this whole base is a goddamn farce?" he asked, somewhat rhetorically. "The Alliance is paying millions of credits to keep us housed on a planet where nothing ever goddamn happens."

"I think some politician watches too many bad alien-invasion movies," Jimmy said. "Thinks some species wearing rubber prosthetics waving around CGI tentacles are going to drop asteroids out of the sky on us."

"Heh. Bring it on." He patted the pocket that held the assault rifle. "I've got the new guns now."

"Awesome, you gotta let me fire that off! Hey, there they are." Jimmy slowed the armored truck to a crawl, jumping out to help two girls into the back of the truck. "Alright, ladies, this is Zaeed, he works in the armory. This is Wei and Jessie."

"Charmed," he said, smiling and trying to hide his nervousness. They both twittered that slightly-annoying oh-I'm-so-quaint laugh, but Jessie certainly seemed to be interested in him, if her constant look-then-glance-away meant what he thought it did. "You ladies ever get to fire a real gun before?"

Wei just shook her head, blushing slightly, but Jessie shrugged. "My dad has a little twenty-two for shooting the rabbits. Does that count?" He and Jimmy both chuckled.

"Not what I had in mind. Good enough for rabbits, yeah," he unzipped the top of the pocket and pulled out the new M-8 Avenger, leaving it compacted for the moment. "This, now, is the future of weaponry."

Both girls admired the weapon for a moment, then Jessie looked up and caught his eyes. "Are you going to sit here and talk all day, or are you going to show me how to handle a big thing like this?"

Zaeed was glad the back of the seat kept his sudden reaction from sight, though from the twinkling in her eyes, she knew exactly what had just happened. "Keep your shirt on," he growled out, trying not to trip over his own tongue. "Don't want to scare the locals by shooting off in the middle of the street."

She snickered politely at that, and when Wei started asking Jimmy questions about the vehicle a moment later, he couldn't have recalled what she said if a rubber-forehead alien had held a laser gun to his head. He was too busy staring at Jessie like an idiot, so at least he would have been able to perfectly describe her jade colored eyes, her tiny, freckle-spotted nose, or the tiny scar at one corner of her mouth.


	4. Chapter 4

_Author's Note: Some reviews have complained about the ... unorthodox jumping from scene to scene and place to place. That is meant to be somewhat deliberate; this fic isn't a complete minute biography, but a collection of important scenes in Zaeed's life._

_Like First Contact._

* * *

"So what did you have planned for today?" Jessie asked, keeping up as they trekked up the gradual hill towards the small copse of trees on the other side.

"Something special," he said enigmatically.

"Zaeed," she mock-wailed, making him wince theatrically and grab at his ears. "C'mon, it's our six month anniversary."

"That's why it's a surprise," he said, pausing as they stepped into the thin underbrush between the trees. "This way," he reached out to take her hand, leading her to a small clearing in the center of the woods.

Smiling broadly, she huffed again, but kept up with him as they stepped onto a series of blankets, with a covered basket of food resting to one side. "A surprise picnic?" she asked, teasingly, letting her hand slip out of his as she danced over to examine the basket. "Why Zaeed, I didn't expect anything quite so romantic from you."

He grumbled something under his breath before she flitted back to his side, wrapping her arms around his neck and planting a kiss on his eager lips. "I know how much you like little romantic gestures like this," he said when they finally came up for air, "So I figured we could –"

Whatever else he was going to say was suddenly cut off with a quarter second whooshing noise and a blast of air and light in the direction of the base, two miles away. The shockwave that went along with the noise was strong enough to send them both tumbling to the ground, the basket tipping over, food scattering across the grass. Jessie was shouting something, but he couldn't hear her through the ringing in his ears.

Desperately, he scrabbled at his pocket comp, signaling everyone he could think of at the base. Finally, a text came back from Jimmy. _Something orbital just hit the base, I'm down in the colony._ Whooshing came from overhead, and he looked up just in time to see the tail end of a shuttle headed for the colony. "Who was that? Are they Alliance?" she asked him, clinging tightly to his arm.

Gently, he pried her loose, enough to pull the M8 out of his cargo pants and unfold it. "I don't know, but I don't think so. Stay behind me, sweetheart," he ordered her, creeping up to the edge of the trees and crawling to the top of the hill, Jessie close behind him.

The view from the hill was a nightmare come to life. Three other shuttles had landed around the perimeter of the base, strange armored figures taking prisoners of any Alliance soldiers still standing. Sporadic gunfire echoed around, and he could see several of them go down in a burst of … blue blood? _Did some goddamn politician actually know about this?_ He thought to himself, bringing the rifle's pitiful scope up.

Whoever the invaders were, they _weren't_ human. The body structure was all wrong, the hands looked longer than humans, and weird spurs on the backs of their legs, plus the swept-back helmets. "I don't know who they are, but they're not human," he said grimly, sliding back from the top of the hill. "I need to get out of here, get over to O-base."

"But that's, that's almost twenty kilometers from here," Jessie protested. "We can't do that on foot!"

"I don't have a goddamn choice!" he ranted, hands tightening on the rifle in his hands. "They just wrecked the base. I just have to hope that O-base was small enough they didn't decide to bomb it from orbit." He started down the hill moving at an angle, Jessie rushing to move up behind him. "If I'm lucky, Jimmy took that dinosaur with him, and we can pick up whoever's in town." He pulled out the comp with his left hand, passing it to her. "Text him, let him know we're on our way, and that aliens are invading Fort McBoring."

He could hear her teeth chattering in the spring breeze as she tapped away, but he kept moving. He liked the girl, and while he couldn't just leave her, it's not like he could depend on her like she was another soldier. "He says he's got the Tiger, he's at the pub on Seventh, and he's seen the aliens."

"Fuck!" He kept walking as he ran through different scenarios in his head. "How long can you run for?"

"What?"

"How _long_ can you _goddamn run_ for? We've got three kilometers to cover. I can do that in ten minutes. Can you keep up?" He glanced behind him at her wide eyes and trembling body. "I don't want to leave you behind, but if I can't meet up with Jimmy before he gets surrounded then we're all goddamn dead!"

"I, I, I," she stammered, then stopped, bending over and vomiting bile onto the grass. "My run time in high school was four minutes for the one kay," she whispered.

He nodded, then reached over and pulled her into a tight hug, planting a kiss on her temple as she clung to him. "You set the pace," he said more gently, "I'll stay just in front of you so I can keep you safe. Okay?" She nodded brusquely, pushing away from him and closing her eyes to take several deep breaths. "Let's go."

She started jogging, speeding up after a moment to a fairly decent running pace. It still felt easy for Zaeed, but he was used to doing this pace in full armor carrying three weapons and two hundred rounds of ammo. It was more like fifteen minutes when they reached the edge of the colony, slowing to a swift walk. Gunfire could be heard nearby, which gave him hope for the humans.

He stopped at the corner of the building, holding up a fist, which she fortunately understood. Peeking around the corner, he saw two of the aliens with their back to him, and wasted no time opening fire. Two three-round bursts, one for the shields and one for the unprotected alien, sent one of them to the ground. His partner whirled around, sending bullets blasting away at the edge of the building. _They're using mass effect weapons,_ he noted with an idle corner of his brain, then dropped prone, nothing but his head and arms and gun sticking out around the corner of the building.

The angle on the head wasn't as good, but six rounds to the center body mass still worked just fine. "Oh my god," Jessie whimpered, "they really are aliens."

"Looks like it," he said, eyeing the indigo blood dripping out from their broken armor. "Hold this," he ordered, passing her the M-8, which she cradled with only faint familiarity. Picking up the pistols they had been armed with, he examined them quickly. _Identical designs, small eezo cores, blocks of what looks like titanium._ He wrapped his hands around the unfamiliar grips, then took aim at one of the dead bodies and squeezed off a shot with each hand. _Hollywood gunfighting, I'm going to end up a goddamn corpse if I keep this up._ "Do you think you can shoot them?"

She stared at the body, doubly-dead now, and slowly nodded her head. "I, I think so," she stammered. "What are they doing here?"

"I don't know," he growled, "but they're going to goddamn regret pissing off humanity." Keeping the pistols aimed down, he started down the street at a trot. The gunfire was nearby, and along with it he heard the familiar roar of the Tiger. The thing was a dinosaur, but damn if it wasn't a solid piece of ass-kicking machinery.

He turned another corner, just in time to see the vehicle roaring his direction. Several people were inside, judging from the muzzle flashes coming out the sides, and he watched Jimmy run over an alien, crushing the blue-blooded bastard with four tons of good ol' Earth-smelted steel. He laid down some covering fire, causing several of the invaders to duck backwards behind their shuttles or hastily erected barricades.

The Tiger slewed to a stop, and Jessie ran for it, for the safety of the armored back of the vehicle. _At least she's still got enough presence of mind to hold on to the rifle_, he thought proudly, keeping up a steady rate of fire with the pistols, first one, then the other.

Thus it came as a complete shock when the Tiger exploded, four eruptions blasting into it in quick succession. He turned his head even as the blast threw him backwards, seeing a half-dozen more aliens, holding what looked like rocket launchers. He rolled over, fighting desperately to get to his feet, and stopped, numb.

In front of his face was the M-8, along with Jessie's forearm. He recognized the blue lacy sleeve as the shirt she had been wearing, half an hour and a lifetime ago at their picnic, and the simple silver bracelet he'd spent half a paycheck to have sent from a buddy from basic stationed in Dubai. He almost didn't feel it when two of the aliens dropped on him like a pile of bricks, taking away the pistols and binding his wrists behind his back. The aliens spoke their alien language, and the last thing he saw before one of them raise a hand, glowing orange holograms surrounding it, was the painted face of one of the aliens.


	5. Chapter 5

_Author's Note: The turian name used here is based of a quick google-Latin word I found: fidicula. It is not me typo-ing Ridiculus._

* * *

Zaeed looked up at the dawning sky. Two hundred other prisoners, almost all Alliance military, were in the camp as well, guarded by half that many aliens. They knew what they were doing, he had to give them credit for that, keeping the humans split up into manageable blocks, fed on half rations. "What do you think they're going to do to us?" one of the others said. He was some dumb hick kid, fresh out of basic, and looked up to the two year veteran.

"Look, Branson," he growled irritably, "for the fifth goddamn time, I don't goddamn know what a goddamn alien is thinking!" He spit at the fence, drawing a glare from the guard patrolling nearby. "It takes three days just to transit to the Charon relay from Earth. Best goddamn scenario, the Alliance shows up tomorrow."

"What happens if they don't?" he said, voice trembling.

Standing up irritably, Zaeed shot him another disgusted look. "Then when I feel peckish, I'm going to goddamn rip your arm off and eat it." Some part of him, the professional Corporal, knew he was being unfair. The rest of him, the parts that watched his girlfriend and his best friend blown up, didn't care.

The prisoner camp was small, large enough that the fifty of them in their section could roam around slightly, constricted to maybe a quarter kilometer square, far enough away they couldn't communicate with the other five portions of the camp without being blazingly obvious. Still, for lack of anything better to do, he paced along the fence, metal stakes stuck six centimeters apart, three meters tall.

And, as he discovered, watching a guard purposefully shove past another marine, electrified, as well. He moved over to help, the man twitching on the ground, a nasty red welt already rising across the length of one forearm. "You alright?"

He didn't get a chance to hear the answer. The angry guard grabbed Zaeed by the wrist, and unconsciously, he moved into close quarter combat drill, trying a leverage throw. To his greater surprise, it even worked, flipping the alien right into the fence. Unfortunately for Zaeed, this drew the attention of the other five guards within range, and the armor meant the guard didn't even get shocked.

With nothing left to lose at this point, Zaeed went all-out. Before the guard could rise, he stomped the helmet full force, shattering the faceplate as it tore loose, and he aimed another kick, shattering one yellow-painted mandible. Then something large, heavy, and metal hit him right between the shoulderblades, slamming him into the fence and holding him against the electrified bars. His vision went to static, his hearing filled with an awful whining white noise, and he could feel the burn blisters popping as they pulled him away and put him into restraints.

His vision returned just long enough for him to see a dark interior of a vehicle as they tossed him into it, clearly unconcerned with additional injuries. He faded in and out of consciousness, enough to know that he wet himself at some point. If he hadn't been laying in it, he would have considered it funny.

He had more muddled flashes of metal corridors and alien geometry, built to accommodate these larger beings, and dozens of faces, all identical save for the paint. At some point, they left him in a room, laying on a cot too large for him, restraints removed but unneeded in the dark and the heat and the pain.

When next he awoke, it was to find himself stripped down, strapped to what reminded him uncomfortably of a dentist's chair. Someone had cleaned him off, and the burns on his arms and face had been treated with something, as well as padded where they ran beneath the restraints. Two of the aliens were watching him, wearing nearly identical blue paint, though neither wore armor.

Silent, he stared back at them, until the one on the left said something alien and left. Then Zaeed took stock of his surroundings, feeling his heart drop more. Medical instruments were present around the room, and it was enough to send his mind straight to _torture_. The alien was scanning him, using some kind of orange hologram-tool that surrounded its right hand. It started circling him, continuing the scans. "Trying to decide where to start with the goddamn knives?" he growled.

It stopped, played with it some more, and the device started babbling in alien speak. It watched him, head tilted, like a sparrow waiting for a worm to emerge. Then it spoke something briefly, and to Zaeed's surprise, the glowing tool translated it into English. "This your language is? Doctor Fidiculus I am. Here to study your species and reactions I am."

He blinked at that, then with as much dignity as his nudity and injuries would allow, drew himself to attention. "Massani, Zaeed, Corporal in the Terran Alliance, serial number Zulu Mike One One Seven Niner Three Zero Zero Four."

"Unclear your response is. Clarify for me you will," the doctor said. He wasn't clear whether the alien was male or female, though it had shorter head spikes than the guard he'd kicked.

"Massani, Zaeed, Corporal in the Terran Alliance," he started off again.

"Before heard you I did. Clarify for me you will. Meaning of name and rank what is?" it said, shouting over him.

Naturally, this just made him switch to full on parade voice. He'd been practicing, when he could get away and Jessie was busy, the better to sound like a sergeant. They went back and forth like this for an hour, until his voice started rasping, throat dried out from calmly and frustratingly repeating nothing but name, rank, and serial number, while his "doctor" shouted increasingly angry questions at him.

Finally, the alien stormed out, and he let his body fall back against the seat in relief. The red lines from the electrical burns were a constant ache, and he could feel fluid leaking out from burst blisters. _At least I'm not goddamn bleeding_, he thought miserably. He sat and enjoyed the quiet for another five minutes or so, until two more guards showed up, restrained him one wrist at a time, and led him back to his cell. _And it's warm, otherwise I'd have to feel goddamn embarrassed._

This train of actions continued for another week, as far as he could tell. They gave him two meals a day, always bizarre combinations of pre-packaged foods, which gradually improved as the week went on. The last day, he actually had an MRE for breakfast, one of the fairly-tolerable "Hamburger Steak And Potatoes" ones, though he wished there was someone else to trade away his coffee for extra fruit punch.

This time, when the guards led him away, it was down a different corridor. To his surprise, he was dragged to a room with four other humans, all equally naked and coping with it more or less as he had. _Hey, she's the LT of Jimmy's vehicle command, and he's the CO of O-base_. He managed to keep his surprise from showing on his face, though he was guessing that the aliens had picked out the other two probably also due to prison camp leadership places.

He kept quiet, having learned the first two days that any comments in the corridors tended to be met with punches, kicks, and the occasional pistol-whip if they were wearing yellow paint. (Why the yellow-paint guys were meaner, he hadn't a clue, having already forgotten the paint color of the guard he kicked.) A hologram popped up, showing the planet of Shanxi, and zoomed in to show one of the smaller cities on the planet, the next continent over from where Zaeed had been stationed. Doctor Fidiculus stepped up to the front, activating her glowy-tool. "Studying your language and mental traits has been my research for the last week," she said. _Huh, upgrade. No more kid show talking._ "We bring you here to show you the example we make of your fellow soldiers."

The camera view changed, obviously some combination of infrared, x-rays, and some good computer algorithms, showing two armored vehicles parked inside a farming shed on the outskirts of the colony. Three dozen people were in that building or the one next door, two of them obviously children, and two miles away were alien troops, obviously being harassed by the human resistance.

As he watched, the two buildings with the human defenders suddenly blinked out of existence, along with two more nearby. The aliens came roaring in, shooting the few people not already dead by whatever bomb or missile strike the aliens had used. "More of this, we will do to your people. Speak to your leaders. Encourage their surrender. Save their lives."

Zaeed, at least, wasn't tempted to say anything other than calling them names that probably wouldn't translate. To his relief, none of the other four prisoners spoke up either. After two minutes of silence, all five of them were seized by their respective guards and dragged back to their cells. Still grieving for the loss of his friends, the only thought running through his head was, W_hat's taking the goddamn Alliance so goddamn long?_


	6. Chapter 6

The next three days passed by exactly as this one had – gathered with the other Alliance prisoners, forced to watch as the Turians wiped out a building or three with orbital strikes, overkill to take out, at best, a dozen Alliance soldiers. Then thrown back into his cell before his turn on the interrogation/examination chair. He was kind of surprised they hadn't turned to physical torture, but that might have been simple unfamiliarity with humanity's physiology.

The fourth day, he finished eating a can of sliced peaches, drinking the sugary juice down and making as many slurping noises as possible. Zaeed had discovered that the aliens were both fascinated and repulsed by human lips, and since the hallway guards didn't get the translator program, they couldn't tell him to stop creeping them out.

Normally, it was about now, plus or minus fifteen subjective minutes, that they were dragged out to watch the invaders smash flat yet enough building full of civilians. Yet an hour crawled past, then another. He was starting to get worried now, fighting to maintain his calm and his count on the time. With nothing better to do, he started doing push-ups. Then crunches. Then jumping jacks. The alien ship was much warmer, so he finished when his feet started slipping on the deck.

"Hey!" he shouted at the door, knowing it was futile, "what the hell is going on today? You going to keep me goddamn locked up in here for shits and giggles?" They didn't answer, even to give him a normal threatening glare and shake a clenched fist in his direction, so he sighed, laying down on a section of floor that wasn't covered in sweat.

He dozed off for some indeterminate period of time, to be awakened by two alien hands grabbing him around the ankles and flipping him over, the restraints slapped into place quickly. Unlike his usual tactic, Zaeed didn't get a chance to resist them today, though since this time _both_ of the guards were wearing yellow face paint (in different designs, not that he knew what the hell they goddamn meant), he might have gone quietly and saved himself another set of bruises.

When they reached the room with the viewscreen, they practically threw him inside, his feet slipping out from under him, sending him tumbling into the female officer and dropping them both to the floor in a heap. It took him a moment to roll off of her legs and far enough away to stand up. "Sorry about that, ma'am," he muttered, carefully working his legs under him as the guards watched.

"Don't worry about it, soldier," she said, then gracefully pulled one of those crazy karate moves, like he'd seen in the movies, and was back on her feet before he could stagger back to being upright.

They stood there for another two or three minutes before the doctor arrived with some other alien, the first one Zaeed could remember seeing without face paint. _Damn, no wonder they paint their faces_, he thought, repulsed and fascinated in equal measure. The faint shimmer of the metallic skin-scales was far more pronounced without the paint, and evidently, from the other aliens' behavior, it was some kind of status marking.

Fidiculus made some chirruping noise that they learned was the equivalent to a sergeant shouting 'Attention!' "Today brings important news for all of you and the other prisoners," the doctor proclaimed without preamble.

The viewscreen came on, showing General Williams, the head of all Alliance forces on Shanxi. His dress uniform was still impeccable, though one of his two stars was missing a point. "In light of the continuing bombardment by the alien invaders, calling themselves the Turian Hierarchy, I am hereby offering our unconditional surrender."

He rattled on for another minute or three, the words washing over Zaeed as he stood, numb and uncomprehending. _Surrender? How can he surrender? Sure, they're bombing goddamn civilians from orbit, but we can't fight them if you goddamn _surrender_ and give up. What does that tell the goddamn civilians? How are we going to explain ourselves to the goddamn Alliance when they show up?_

"You have seen your leader," Fidiculus' words broke in on his reverie. "Your military is surrendering to us. You are ordered to cooperate. You will tell us the details of your mass relay transits!"

The doctor had been pacing in front of the five prisoners while the bare-faced one watching quietly from next to the viewscreen, and had shouted the last three words into Zaeed's face. Without any real conscious thought, he brought up a knee sharply into the doctor's abdomen, full force, and then whirled around even as the guards raised their weapons. He grabbed one mandible in each hand, and flipped himself over the alien body, yanking full force with both hands.

He felt the neck snap, then the mandibles ripped free of the rest of the head, blue blood spraying the wall behind where he had been standing. He dropped the mandibles and started running towards the non-painted turian, hoping that he could at least do enough damage to make them remember him. A sudden hammering noise echoed in the room, and his legs were filled with fiery pain as he tumbled to the floor, skidding to a stop three feet from the unmoving alien.

He tried to get up, ten times more difficult with bullet wounds in his legs and his hands still manacled behind his back, so he was naturally still on the ground when three of the guard dropped on him, kicking and slamming their rifle butts into his back, arms, and stomach, hard enough that he vomited his breakfast all over the feet of their leader. "Take him back to med bay," he heard the turian say, translater program running. "Patch him up. Pick two of the others at random and space them."

He wasn't sure if they protested or not, because one of the guards hit him with an electric shock, and darkness claimed him.


	7. Chapter 7

Another week went by, every day filled with the monotony of hours of mindlessly repeating his name, rank, and serial number to frustrated turians. Since he had killed, or at least horribly injured, Doctor Fidiculus, now he had a new interrogator every day. Today's was another one of the yellow painted ones, who was rather fond of punching him when he answered, so by the time he was dragged back to his cell, there was hardly an inch of skin above the wrists and ankles that didn't have a bruise on it.

The guards popped off his restraints as they tossed him into the cell, and he carefully sank to the floor on his back, the least bruised part, since the chair had helped. He groaned carefully, taking careful stock of his injuries. Zaeed couldn't be sure, but he thought he might end up pissing blood from the number of kidney punches he'd taken.

He faded in and out of consciousness, awakening shortly before dinner and forcing himself to get up and stretch out the stiffness. When the door opened, he turned, expecting to receive his food, and instead got the shock of his life.

Standing in the doorway was a gorgeous blue-skinned woman, the color of an afternoon summer sky over Shanxi, with large freckle-like dots of deeper indigo around her eyes and across her cheekbones. When she turned her head to scan his cell was the first time he realized she was definitely not some bizarrely-tattooed human, from the stiff similarly freckled tentacles curving from the back of her head. He stood carefully, examining her in turn, taking note of the armor she wore, similar to the suits the turians wore but molded to fit a body close enough to be human.

Behind her were a quad of turian guards, and another alien, something short with yellow-green skin and giant eyes, just barely visible. The blue woman turned, speaking sharply to the turians, her language fluid and melodious, and after the rebuke one of the soldiers trotted off swiftly. They stood silent, regarding each other, until the soldier came trotting back, and fiddled with his orange hologram.

"Can you understand me now?" the blue woman said, and he guardedly nodded. "My name is Farela T'sir. I am here as a representative of the Citadel Council to evaluate the conditions of the prisoners of war taken from your colony of Shanxi." She turned to glare at the turians. "I am not pleased. May I have your name, please?"

He considered her for a moment longer. "Zaeed Massani, Corporal," and rattled off his serial number.

"Yes, I heard you've been most uncooperative in that regard," she said, and he might have imagined it, but she sounded … pleased? "We are currently negotiating a peace treaty between your Alliance and the Turian Hierarchy, to include the return of all prisoners. In a few days, you should be on your way back to Shanxi." Zaeed wasn't the world's best poker player, but she apparently didn't pick up on his sudden feeling of panic. _We left Alliance space and didn't even feel it?_

The other alien, the short one, spat out a new set of orders to the turians that sounded like a coffee percolator, one of them protested, and instead of replying, the short one simply pointed down the hall. To Zaeed's surprise, the soldier slunk off like a whipped dog.

They stood around for several more minutes, Farela asking him various questions, all of which he simply answered with his normal response, to her own increasing frustration. Part of him was glad to see that these different aliens were still close enough to humanity to get fed up at being denied. Finally, she blurted out, "Damn it, you foolish human, don't you see I'm trying to help you?"

He looked her dead in the eye, and finally said something new. "You're standing next to the aliens who beat me until I pissed blood. You're not trying to help me." If anything, that made her even _more_ pissed off, but at least this time at the turians, not him. With their helmet panels polarized, he had no idea if these guards had anything to do with his interrogation sessions, and he was exaggerating a little bit, but what the hell.

The soldier that had been ordered away returned, carrying some kind of folded cloth and an MRE. He was almost added to the ongoing shitstorm from Farela, but the short one motioned him inside the cell, dexterously moving past the shouting woman. "Records show this is normally your meal time. Had clothes brought as well." The tiny mouth tightened in what might have been anger or amusement. "We are having you moved to a new cell with your other two prisoners."

He cautiously took the armful from the turian, who seemed happy to retreat out to the hallway. "There were five of us yesterday," he added, feeling happy to add another shovel of shit to the proverbial fan. He set down the MRE on the floor and shook out the cloth, revealing it to be a pair of merchant spacer coveralls. He put them on, being careful not to catch any of his body hair in the zipper.

Farela and the short one brought him through the ship to what looked like crew quarters. The O-base CO was gone, as was the other man with the grey hair; Zaeed thought he was a warrant officer or one of the chiefs from the base on the other continent. Still there were the female LT and the Arabic man whose formerly bald head was now covered in two weeks worth of stubble. The new room had three racks, ship-style, a small table with three chairs bolted to the deck, and an attached toilet/shower cubicle. After a bare cell that closely resembled a storage closet, this was the next best thing to heaven.

Two other blue aliens, along with another short one and a floating neon pink jellyfish (how the hell it was managing to float around and talk, without drying out, was a mystery Zaeed wouldn't solve until it ceased to matter to him) had brought his fellow prisoners, and the group of aliens were now standing outside their room arguing with each other. "Did either of you tell them anything?" the lieutenant asked.

The man shrugged. "I gave them a list of the injuries done to me by our captors, and our treatment. Beyond that, no."

Zaeed nodded as he tore open his package. "I explained my full-body bruising and told them they executed two of us yesterday." The other two looked out the door before turning to their own meals. "I think that's what got them so upset right now."

"It damn well should, by Allah. Cruelty like that hasn't been seen on Earth in organized warfare for generations." He took a bite of what might have been chicken. "Master Chief Duran."

"Lieutenant Eisley," the woman said, looking at her 'steak'. "Want to trade?"

Zaeed looked at his PB&J. "Sure, I probably need the protein. Corporal Massani."

"How'd a corporal get picked up in this?" Duran asked. "The rest of us got picked up because of leadership."

"I, ah, tried to stop one of the prisoners from getting electrocuted by a guard." He started sawing at the meat chunk with the plastic knife. "Stomped his face in. Didn't manage to get ahold of any weaponry before five other guards slammed me into the electric fence and dragged me up here."

Eisley nodded, impressed. "What were you, infantry? Preparing for N-candidacy?"

He grinned before popping in the first bite. "Nope. Armory maintainer." He looked up at Duran's uncompromising stare. "Swear. I fix guns. I did get a couple of their pistols before I got captured, they use mass accelerator stuff like the new M-8 line, only a little more advanced. We could probably match it in fifteen, twenty years." He nodded respectfully to the woman. "Corporal Jia was my friend, ma'am, they blew up his Tiger in front of me. The shockwave knocked me down, and that's how I got captured.

"Murphy's laws of combat," she muttered. "I hope you didn't lose anyone else important."

"No, ma'am." _Don't think about Jessie, don't talk about Jessie, don't _think _about Jessie_.

The alien conversation outside their door suddenly stopped, and Farela stepped into the doorway. "If your ranks translate over correctly, Miss Eisley is in charge of your group?" She nodded cautiously. "The asari and salarian governments are putting personal attention into the issue of prisoners of war. The people of Shanxi were already liberated by the Alliance fleet when it arrived, and in no more than three days, we will see you home to your people."

They all simply nodded, still cautiously holding their tongues. "Myself, and Orlaen Solus will be remaining on board. If there is anything you wish to discuss, or other issues that need resolving, this comm. station has been programmed to communicate directly with us." She pointed to a panel next to the door. "For now, we will leave you in peace." With no further fanfare, the new aliens departed, and the door closed. The four turian guards, of course, remained in the hallway.

"I think they're scared of you, Corporal," Eisley said dryly before taking a bite of her sandwich.

"Ma'am, I apologize for broaching the subject like this, but did the turians attempt … sexual torture on you?" Duran asked quietly. Zaeed froze in his sawing motion momentarily.

"No. I wondered if that was on the plan, when I woke up naked and strapped to a chair, but no." She shrugged. "Before Massani's little attack on our head jailer, they were remarkably non-violent, just intense and implacable. I don't know if it's psychology, biology, or methodology that gets the thanks." She met his eyes. "You?"

"Likewise, ma'am, I wondered when I woke up naked, though I gained consciousness in my cell rather than in their chair." He looked down at his empty tray. "On a less grim note, what's up with the jellyfish?"

Zaeed grinned. "Maybe the blue chicks're really Japanese at heart?" The two superiors both shot daggers at him with their eyes.

"I've been a chief too long," Duran muttered. "Ma'am, go ahead and pick a bunk." It ended up with Zaeed in the top one, which was a little tall even for him, but he'd live with it. After all, even if the blue bitches were lying to them, his situation had improved immensely.


	8. Chapter 8

_Author's Note: First Contact has come and gone, but as we all know, some scars don't fade away. I'm hoping that no one expects the surprise name at the end, but I guess I'll see in the reviews._

* * *

The woman sighed, tucking a loose strand of salt and pepper hair behind her ear. "Corporal," she started to say, as he cut her off.

"It's goddamn _Mister_ Massani now, and you know it," he spat out, glaring away from his mandated therapist and towards the smoky polarized window. She sighed again.

"Zaeed, I'm trying to help you here. It's been a year since the First Contact War. Keeping all your feelings about the combat and your treatment as a POW bottled up isn't going to help you get better." She set down the data pad, leaning forward earnestly, the laugh lines around her eyes crinkling up with worry.

"Look, doc, I don't want to goddamn talk about it," he ground out. "Not to you, not to anyone."

"I know you don't trust me," she said, and he snorted in amusement. "No, you haven't exactly been subtle about it. Despite us having these lovely talks," she sprinkled that with a little bit of sarcasm, "every week for the last six months, despite what I've done to open up to you, there's some part of you that won't trust me." She shrugged and leaned back in the chair. "You still won't even call me by my first name."

He sighed, pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes. "Doctor Go, I don't want to spend hours rehashing the hours I spent getting the crap beat out of me by the goddamn turians. I don't want to talk about watching my best friend," _don't think about Jessie_, "getting blown to goddamn ashes. I don't want to talk about my shitty childhood in the Sydney slums."

"Then what do you want?" she asked him quietly, hands folded in her lap. Faint afternoon sunlight softened the artificial lights through the polarization, just enough to make a beam of dust motes dance in front of her face.

"I want to fight," he said without hesitation. "I want to have my own weapon, to have my life riding on my skill and my wits. Because it's the only goddamn thing in life that seems fair." Without another word, Zaeed rose from the chair, stalking out of the psychologist's office, through the meeting room, and onto the streets of Shanxi.

A year after the month-long turian occupation had finished, all of the physical scars had vanished, erased with almost indecent haste by the Engineering Corps and civilian firms, the rubble cleared, the bodies identified and buried or cremated as personal custom dictated. A banner still stretched across the street, advertising the "Peace and Reconciliation Festival" that had ended the week before.

He had gone to it, most out of some private morbid curiosity than anything else. He'd even wondered, to himself, if he was looking for an excuse to get revenge for his treatment. But to his surprise, maybe his disappointment, the dozen turians present had fallen pretty quickly into three obvious categories. First were the politicians, high ranking old men and women there solely for the points they could score against their opponents several thousand light years away. Second were the three bleeding-heart-liberals, or maybe closet xenophiles, there to get their rocks off by gushing over how _sorry_ they were and what a _tragedy_ the war was and how hopefully they could grow _closer_ together as time passed, the stupid goddamn wankers.

The third group was the pair of, as far as he could tell, fairly standard soldiers. _Their_ attitude he could grasp completely; they were paranoid and hell and a small step from jumping at every twitch of the crowd. Hell, had anyone in the Alliance been dumb enough to suggest he go visit some turian planet, he'd be feeling the same way. He'd even struck up a conversation with them, admittedly for the fun of watching them squirm when he finally said that he'd been one of the prisoners on their ships. Still, one of them, Pellus something-or-other hadn't been all that bad.

Lost in thought, he navigated the street s on autopilot, arriving at a dingy basement bar that barely survived an orbital bombing of the next building over. A year ago, it had been pretty clear Alliance territory. Now the clientele had changed only slightly. New Alliance soldiers weren't welcome, and a certain batch of civilians were found there more often. The owner had even spoken of changing the name to the Survivor Bar.

Even at 1500, the place had a fairly good crowd already. The two pool tables and three dart boards were all being used by pairs or trios, swapping tales with the easy looseness that spoke of a handful of drinks down the hatch. Even the plinko machine in the corner, which had shown up after a drunken bet, had two women arguing over whether "tilting" it counted as cheating as they dropped the plastic disks in the top.

Zaeed knew all of them by sight, except for one weedy looking man sitting at the bar, nursing a mug slowly. Curiosity getting the better of him, Zaeed moved up two stools away, contemplating the wall behind the bartender, trying to figure out what he hadn't had before. "What'll it be, Massani?" Master Chief (retired) Duran asked him.

"I don't goddamn know. Surprise me," the younger man said. Raising an eyebrow, Duran considered for a moment, then grinned and pulled out a beer bottle, popping off the lid and setting it in front of Zaeed. "Lite beer? Your surprises suck, Duran."

"So does your military bearing, kid," the bartender teased back. "Hell, you only got out a month ago, and you're already forgetting how to sit on a barstool at attention."

"Fuck attention," he muttered, taking a swig of the beer as Duran walked away, laughing, to settle a dispute at one of the pool tables. Glancing over, he saw the new guy staring into his beer. "So. What's your story?"

The man didn't jump, but the sudden twist of his eyes, and the twitch of his hand, were familiar to the ex-Marine. "What business is it of yours?"

He shrugged, rolling the mostly-full bottle between his hands. "Just wondering if you were lost. This bar is just for turian prisoners."

The weedy little guy sized him up, obviously checking exit routes at the same time, which was enough to make Zaeed respect him a little more. "Is that so? Then I'm not lost."

"Huh." He took another few swallows. "So what'd you do?"

The man snorted into his drink. "You're going to claim I'm lying," he predicted, and both of Zaeed's eyebrows shot up. "I was a supply clerk for R. G. Terraformers." He paused to take a drink of his own, making Zaeed wait impatiently. "They landed one of their armored vehicles near our heavy bay. I, ah, aimed a bulldozer at it with a brick on the gas pedal."

Zaeed paused to picture this, and started snickering. "That sounds goddamn brilliant," he said, holding up his bottle, clinking it against the guy's mug. "I'm ex-Corporal. I got caught in the first wave when my buddy took a rocket to the face, knocked me down long enough to get captured. Then I face-stomped one of the guards who decided to have fun tossing prisoners into the electric fence."

The other guy drew up a little straighter. "Hey, I heard about that. You killed the guard, from what they said. Broke his fucking mandible, drove a tooth through an artery or something."

"No shit?" Zaeed mused on that for a minute. "No one ever goddamn told me." He put down the bottle, turning to offer a handshake. "Zaeed Massani."

He accepted the handshake, grip firmer than Zaeed had expected. "Vido Santiago." They both turned back to their beers in companionable silence. "So," Vido finally said, "you tell your therapist to go piss up a rope too?"

Their laughter added to the atmosphere of the bar, the feeling of broken people, huddling together and praying the next blow won't fall.


	9. Chapter 9

"Are you sure about this?" Zaeed muttered.

"Keep your panties on, Massani," Vido muttered back. He eased out slowly, looking back the edge of the building.

"Four months since we joined this chickenshit outfit," Zaeed continued to complain, "and the first time some actual opposition shows up, our bosses run like a bunch of goddamn little girls."

Gunfire echoed from nearby, and both of them tensed, sourcing it. "Three blocks that way," Vido gestured. "More or less."

"Makes me goddamn glad the turians found us instead of the batarians," Zaeed muttered. "What are we waiting for, a goddamn invitation?"

They moved out of cover, quick walking to a fallen aircar, the asari driver dead behind the controls. Zaeed popped up over the top, scanning down the street through the small scope. "We should be coming up right on their goddamn asses," he said quietly.

"Good. I hate a fair fight," Vido responded. They moved again, short dashes along the buildings, keeping pressed against the feeble cover until they reached the corner. Zaeed risked a quick glance around the corner, and held up three fingers. Two, one, and he rolled out of cover, landing in a perfect prone firing position, squeezing the trigger on his rifle while Vido's pistol barked above and to his left. Two of the batarians died almost instantly, the short bursts from the rifle breaking their shields, followed by a head and a neck shot from the pistol.

The third one whirled around, the blast from his shotgun taking out Vido's shields as he ducked back into cover, but one of the resisting asari colonists took that opportunity to punch a hunting rifle round through his head and out through his eyeballs. "At least the goddamn shields stop blood spatter," he muttered to himself as he got quickly back to his feet. He waved his omni-tool above his head as he moved forward around the temporary barricade the batarians had been using.

Out of one of the buildings came almost a dozen asari and two salarians. "Thank you for the assistance," one of the older asari said. "Is there a safe zone?"

Vido was talking quietly with Caudi, their turian boss. "If you can get four blocks that way, and one north, the batarians have backed off the perimeter around the water treatment plant," he told the civilians.

"I have the only weapons, and these batarians are used to fighting biotics," the asari continued. "We need an escort."

Zaeed nodded at the same moment Vido shook his head. "We're supposed to be regrouping over by the spaceport, Massani!"

"And how likely is it our goddamn contract will get renewed if a goddamn matriarch says we're abandoning civilians, Santiago?" he spat back. "It's four goddamn blocks. We just need to get them within sight."

Vido hesitated, torn between the desire not to babysit and the desire to ensure his next paycheck. "Fuck. Fine. Let's get moving." Zaeed gestured to the civilians, taking one flank with Vido on the other, the matriarch guarding their rear with her hunting rifle.

For three blocks, nothing happened but a couple of stumbles on broken road. Then an armored vehicle roared out of a side street, slamming on the brakes as it passed them. The civilians started to panic as the hatch opened. "Massani, Santiago! You two monkeys lost?" Caudi shouted. "The spaceport is that fucking direction! I thought you could read a map!"

Zaeed jerked a thumb at the matriarch. "You want us to abandon a bunch of goddamn civvies? That'll make us look good."

"I don't give a fuck about the civvies! Kill me some fucking batarians and loot their fucking corpses!" The hatch slammed shut, and the transport roared off down the street again.

"Does he not realize who I am?" their matriarch asked, clearly amused.

"Don't think he cares. You'll be perfectly safe to get to the treatment plant from here," Zaeed told her, already facing the direction of the spaceport, a mile away. "He wouldn't be driving around if there was a chance the paint on his goddamn truck would get scratched."

She nodded, studying their faces. "Massani and Santiago. I will remember you when this is over."

"Enough with the chit-chat, can we fucking move?" Vido complained.

* * *

Three hours later, the surviving third of the batarians lifted off, carrying a much smaller number of slaves than they had hoped for. It was something of a bittersweet victory for Zaeed, as Caudi's Cohort was also effectively finished as a mercenary outfit. They had taken down twice their number in batarians, but over half their own force was dead as well.

"So, what do we do now, genius?" Zaeed asked, looking at his bag full of his own loot and trophies. Their paycheck had been good, but not sizeable – enough to get flown off of here for civilization, and maybe a month or two of "leave" before he'd need to find a new job.

"It's not like there's a shortage of mercenary groups, Massani," Vido muttered. "Just a shortage of ones good enough for you."

"Hey, you want to join a bunch of goddamn losers, go ahead – I signed up for the Cohort with you, and we could have been part of the goddamn other half." He kicked the side of his bag, making the guns and modification chips clink together.

"Oh, sure, let's just fly to Palaven and enlist in the turian military," Vido sarcastically blurted. "I'm sure they'll be happy to take a supply clerk and a sociopath."

"They probably have their quota of supply clerks," Zaeed responded, sounding bored. "Give me the goddamn list of merc companies so I can find one that's not a goddamn suicide mission." Vido huffed out an angry sigh, but forwarded it. The next two days, as they traveled to the nearest relay and back to the Citadel, he scanned through the list, researching them as best as he was able. Life as a mercenary was pretty goddamn hard, but he still wouldn't have it any other way.


	10. Chapter 10

Vido and Zaeed stood in front of a desk, both of them slouching. "I've heard about you two," the asari said. "Survived that Cohort disaster. Which shows you were at least lucky, if not good." She looked down at her terminal and typed in a few things. "Alright, you're hired. We're shipping off in two days, protecting a HE-3 plant from batarian raiders."

"Alright, what's the catch?" Vido asked. The asari stared at him, clearly amused.

Finally, after about fifteen seconds of silence, she relented. "It's a volus refinery. Outside of our living quarters, full enviro-suit is mandatory, and we'll all be on four-on-four-off the first couple of days until we're more familiar with the peculiarities of the terrain." They both groaned at the thought. "And now that your names are already on the roster, report to our barracks." She sent them an address in the warehouse district next to the spaceport, and they set out through the run-down parts of Illium.

The two days passed in the sort of peculiar boredom that every fighting man claimed to hate. They played cards against a collection of asari, salarians, and humans, winning a tiny amount of credits. They watched Fornax of every variety they could think of (and some they hadn't and didn't want to, such was life). They slept as much as they could and checked all of their weapons. It had been almost nine human months since Caudi split up his group, and freelancing sucked.

Crowding onto a trio of Kowloon transports, they joined the other two hundred mercenaries in cramped bunks. Crates full of replacement parts for their weapons and armor took up most of the room, while the other two ships were full of food. Volus might have been just as levo as them, but they damn well couldn't eat the same food.

The station itself was, aside from being over-pressurized to their peace of mind, was almost familiar in layout and details. Lots of pipes, electrical conduits, and several dozen tubby volus waddling around with no suits on. That was the weirdest part to see – even Fornax didn't have exposed volus, not that Zaeed had seen, thankfully. They reminded him of one of those hairless, super-wrinkly dogs, but with these weird star-shaped snouts. Their hands didn't have fingers so much as really short tentacles, and in their own atmosphere, they were faster and more graceful. Not that that was saying much, of course.

Their barracks were on one side of the compound, several cargo containers connected together and reinforced to withstand the crushing pressure without. Vido and Zaeed quickly took their bunks in one corner, near the exit, and didn't bother taking off their armor. They had been among the lucky ones to draw the first patrol.

The station was, essentially, a set of several rings, each one connecting to its neighbors at two spots like a badly drawn figure eight. There were six of them in a row, and they had to patrol the whole area. The Pink Lagoon (which sounded like a goddamn porn star to Zaeed, but he wasn't going to mention that to an asari with three hundred years of combat experience on him) company had four fighters, which would also be patrolling in pairs, along with a couple of sensor sats in orbit. All in all, it should have been a goddamn milk run.

To his surprise and mounting paranoia, the first two months went by with no incidents aside from a drunken salarian merc trying to proposition a volus female (or as Vido joked, he _hoped_ it was a female), and committing suicide-by-atmo. His much smaller body was shipped off still in his armor. After the first week, the watches had been changed to six-on-six-off, which at least gave them closer to a decent amount of sleep.

Vido and Zaeed were just getting their armor on in preparation for their next patrol when the proximity alarms from the satellites started broadcasting. The two fighter pilots not on patrol were out of their bunks and armored up in two minutes flat, aided by several other mercs nearby – everyone was of the same mind, the more raiders who could be shot down or blown up before they landed, the better.

They crowded into the airlock with Anaran, Bob (a salarian; they still didn't understand the name), Bob (a human), Porin, and Nimue. As it cycled, the whole structure jerked sharply, and when the outer door opened, they wasted no time in stumbling out, weapons ready. "Holy mother of God," human Bob muttered, causing them to turn around and look behind them.

The middle of their three cargo barracks had been blown nearly in half, the back one dangling in place by a couple of metal braces. A few mercs, fortunate enough to be in armor, could be seen struggling to climb out before it fell into the far more deadly atmosphere below. "We don't have time to worry about them now," Zaeed said practically. "Vido, pull up that hack."

Scowling, his partner turned on his omni-tool, accessing the wholly-against-contract sensors that the Pink Lagoon leadership had carefully posted around the facility. "Three inbound ships." A sudden burst of light came from above and to one side of the facility. "Two. One of them is landing on ring four."

The split up quickly, Porin joining Zaeed and Vido. The other four, with Anaran leading, took off to the far side when they reached ring two. By the time they had made it the kilometer to ring three, the second ship was landing on ring six. Sporadic gunfire could already be heard, as the mercs on patrol had closed in and started firing on the invaders.

Vido sent the info to their HUDs, and Zaeed motioned to Porin, the asari nodding. They moved up behind one of the large pieces of equipment, and Zaeed and Vido opened fire, taking down the shields of three of the batarians, allowing her to biotically toss them off the open walkway to fall screaming into the amber depths below.

The other six opened fire back at them, and they popped up just enough to keep them off balance, Zaeed managing to take out one with a lucky shot to the knee that sent the batarian tumbling into an exposed electrical conduit. Then the other squad, led off by both Bob's overloading their shields, opened fire on their flank and killed another two of them.

In short order, the outnumbered batarians were taken down. "Good job," Zaeed shouted. "Three more batarian squads are over on ring five, they took out our guys and are emptying the HE-3 tanks into their ships. All the fighters are down, so it's up to us."

"Why the fuck should we care?" Nimue spat. "Let the ugly fuckers kill each other off, this contract is finished anyway."

"Don't you still want to get paid?" Vido said. "Because I sure as fuck do."

"What he goddamn said. The closest group is only four of them. If we're lucky," he glanced around, "they haven't killed everyone yet. Let's move."

They swept quickly down the ring, moving in twos and threes, until they saw the first group of batarians. The raiders were holding a dozen volus at gunpoint, with one of their number slapping restraints of some kind on the refinery workers. Zaeed motioned with economy, and counted down.

Two overloads, a burst of gunfire, and three biotic blasts took out all four batarians before they could fire a single return shot. "Bob, get those restraints off," Zaeed shouting, already moving to collect the fallen weapons. "How many of you goddamn pushballs can fire a goddamn weapon?" he shouted at the volus. Two of them raised pudgy tentacle hands, and he promptly sent assault rifles skittering across the metal plating to them. "Right. Any other batarians show up, get behind some of this equipment and open fire."

"But, this equipment is incredibly delicate!" one of them protested, sounding incredibly weird without the usual pressure suit to attenuate his native language.

"Your body is far more delicate, and less easy to repair," Nimue muttered just loud enough to be heard.

"Just goddamn do it," Zaeed yelled again, and they set off. The next batch of batarians numbered over a dozen. Outnumbered two to one wasn't how he liked his combat. But it wasn't as though he had much choice, if he didn't stop them now, he'd end up facing even worse odds later.

They were somewhat spread out, which would help. He'd also picked up a sniper rifle – a shitty one, of course, it was batarian manufacture after all – but he was a decent shot. He motioned to everyone, had his omni-tool count down, and when both Bobs lit off their shield overloads, squeezed the trigger. He didn't hit the batarian in the head, but in the neck, tearing out his armor and punching into the shoulder of the one behind him.

Everyone else had also opened fire, and two corpses were already floating in the air courtesy of Nimue's singularity. The remaining batarians had turned, grouping up and getting behind cover. The resulting firefight took nearly five minutes to settle, with Anaran dead before they could finish taking out the eight batarians left from their opening shots.

By the time they were ready to move on, the third batarian raider was already retreating, tanks full of stolen fuel and looted equipment. It was a hell of a victory, but at the end of the day, Zaeed Massani was still alive, and that was what counted.


	11. Chapter 11

_Author's Note: It was inevitable that they would get the idea sooner or later. Funding a mercenary group costs credits, of course, and this is a short explanation for how they got the starting funds to do so._

* * *

Vido looked over at Zaeed. His partner was busy putting restraints on the third batarian crew member. The third member of their side was currently slumped against a wall, breathing shallowly as he tried to put pressure on his own wound, a nasty shot through the leg. On a human, it wouldn't have been quite so bad, but for a turian like Cid, it was a little more serious. "I've been thinking," Vido said.

"Funny, I didn't smell any smoke," Zaeed quipped, pausing to kick the batarian in the crotch before yanking the restraints one more notch.

"Har har," Vido deadpanned, moving to the controls of the freighter. "Just saying. You've been bitching for two years now about freelancing."

"So have you," Zaeed responded, kneeling next to Cid and helping him wrap up the oozing wound. "You gonna live?"

"Spirits, I hope so," the turian muttered, shifting slightly to change his grip. "We going to make it back?"

"It's a twelve hour transit back," Vido shouted from the bow. "Isn't there a med table in the next room?"

"Yeah, but it's probably only programmed for batarians," Zaeed shouted, even as he moved to check.

"So anyway," Vido said, the vehicle spinning and cutting the engines on to turn them around. "We should found our own goddamn merc group. I know how to handle the supply side, setting up logistics, and you know how to handle the people."

Zaeed stuck his head back out of the cramped crew area and stared at his partner in disbelief. "You gotta be goddamn joking," he said. "Us? Run a merc group?"

"Why the fuck not? We got a couple years experience, we came out of two different cock-ups – hell, three if you count Shanxi – and we've got a couple of people who'll owe us enough to at least put in a good word."

"As long as I get my cut," Cid said from the floor.

"Cut of what? We're getting paid a lousy thirty k for this run," Zaeed muttered. "You're in luck, they got a couple of dextro meds. Must ship goddamn slaves in their spare time," he spat on the batarian corpse of the first idiot. The other two squirmed uncomfortably, in pain from their injuries.

Cid started laughing. "Spirits, I shouldn't have said anything," he said, and both Vido and Zaeed took up matching poses against opposite bulkheads. "You idiots didn't look in the cargo bay on the way up here?"

"Buncha ore crates," Vido said suspiciously. "What of it?"

"These three were transporting sixty thousand tons of refined iridium," Cid said. "Stuff sells for a hundred, hundred twenty credits a ton on the Citadel. Double that on Omega if you can find the right buyers." The hand not holding down the bandage flapped vaguely in the direction of the stern. "You didn't notice that when we snuck on board from Illium?"

The two humans looked at each other. "I noticed it was ore, but pardon me if I'm not a goddamn stock market player," Zaeed muttered. "Two million credits a piece if we play it safe."

Closing his eyes, Vido tipped his head backwards, resting it against the grimy bulkhead, obviously thinking carefully. While Zaeed was preparing some of the dextro medicine, with a little help from his omni-tool, Vido's next words interrupted him. "Don't bother," he said, and his pistol fired twice.

Following the line of the shots, Zaeed stormed back out into the hallway. "What the goddamn hell was that? You just shot our partner!"

"And now it's _three_ million a piece – if we play it _safe_," Vido said easily. "He's a fucking turian, anyway, not like we're going to miss him. We space these bastards, return the info to that salarian prick, and then dump half the cargo at the Citadel and take the other half to Omega."

Zaeed looked down at the batarians. "Look, Vido, much as I still hate what happened at Shanxi, if we start our own merc company, we're going to have to hire turians. Which means no goddamn shooting them in the goddamn head when they get a lousy goddamn flesh wound!" He was shouting by the end of it, and took out some of his anger by turning and giving the captain another vicious kick to the ribs. "Least they're not goddamn slavers like these bastards."

"Fine, whatever. Let's space them, they'll eventually drift into the local sun here, and we claim salvage." He looked around the ship. "What do you suppose we could get from selling this rust bucket?"

"Half a mil if we're really goddamn lucky," Zaeed muttered, grabbing one of the batarians by the ankle. The prisoner was already pleading hysterically, offering money, women, drugs, anything if the human would just let him live. With Vido dragging the other one, they stuffed both bodies into the airlock, barely, and cycled it manually, watching them thrash as they drifted slowly outside. "We're not spacing Cid." Vido glared at him, but he continued. "We hand the body over to C-Sec, say he was shot fighting off batarian pirates. They can handle getting his body back to whatever goddamn colony he wants to be buried on."

The two men stared at each other for a long, long moment, before Vido finally cocked a slight grin. "Alright, fine. What about the dead pirate numbskull?" They both looked over at the corpse, still laying in a puddle of his own blood. "You got a problem with me spacing him, too?"

"Nah, let's toss the goddamn body before it starts to smell," he replied. Together, they dragged it to the airlock, and ejected it as well. "So how many mercs were you thinking about hiring? We've got to think about armor, weapons, all that shit. They'll fight better if they have all the same equipment, and it can't be shitty batarian rifles."

"We need at least a dozen, if we're going to look even halfway respectable," Vido mused. "Twenty or thirty would be better. More people equal bigger contracts. Could you do thirty people on three million?"

"What about the other three?" Zaeed asked suspiciously.

"Gotta have money put away for payroll, don't we?" They both chuckled a little, settling into chairs for the slow trip back to the mass relay and off to sell their new loot.


	12. Chapter 12

_Author's Note: The Blue Suns get off to a glorious beginning! Or, at least, don't lose money on the first two contracts._

* * *

Zaeed and Vido stood side by side, looking out at their batch of recruits. Forty people, men and women, human and turian mostly, with just the one asari to break it up. "I still say that's a dumb name," Zaeed said, fighting the urge to scratch his neck. The new tattoo itched like mad.

"It's not taken, it gives us a decent color scheme, and it works," Vido muttered back. "You ready for our first contract?"

He shrugged, stepping forward. "Everyone ready for our first contract?" he shouted, met by a roar of approval. He grinned, and raised his omni-tool. "You spiky-faced bastards have it lucky for the first round. We're going to a dextro planet. Some idiot on one of your new colonies set loose a herd of varren, we're gonna wipe out the goddamn bastards."

Several people groaned. "Hey, at least it's in the sunny outdoors," he chided cheerfully. "Anyone wanna volunteer to go protect some volus in their natural environment?"

One of the humans bumped the turian in front of her, with a muttered, "He does!" Laughter rolled through the group momentarily.

"Alright. To the ship. Dust-off in thirty." He watched them pick up their kits, moving for the far cleaner cargo hauler. Zaeed walked back over to his partner. "You sure this is going to work?" he asked quietly.

"Massani, this is a fucking milk run. You're just hunting down a couple dozen varren, and we're getting paid a hundred thousand credits for it." Vido grinned. "Piece of cake."

"Fine, fine, I'll bring you back a varren-skin rug," Zaeed groused, moving for the cargo ship himself. "Just get us something a little more impressive by the time I get back."

"I've got this covered," Vido said with a smile.

* * *

Three weeks later, Zaeed stomped off the ship, walking through the corridors of Omega grimly to their current temporary headquarters in a warehouse nearby. As Vido opened his mouth, clearly intending to ask what took them so long, the flung helmet caught him square in the stomach, making him cough. "What the fuck, Massani?"

"No. More. _Goddamn_. Varren." Zaeed paced back and forth, unbuckling his armor as he went and flinging it in the general direction of his locker. "Or I swear, I will stake you out as goddamn bait."

Vido rolled the helmet after the other armor pieces, watching Zaeed flail as he tried to kick off his armored boots. "Geez, what's so bad about them? I thought they were basically just big dogs."

Still muttering curses in Arabic under his breath, Zaeed paused his kicking to pull up his omni-tool and forward the relevant info over. Slumping into his chair, Vido skimmed it, bolting upright when he got to the money situation. "Massani, what the fuck! Do you know what our profit margin on this fucking _milk run_ turns out to be?"

"Ask me if I goddamn care," he said, finally perching on the edge of a crate to kick off the boots and fling them angrily into the corner.

"We got paid a hundred thousand credits. Our profit for this mission is, wait for it," he growled furiously, "_nine credits_. Nine fucking credits! How the fuck are we going to stay in business if we can't even make a fucking _half a percent_ profit?"

"I thought you could handle the money and supply side," Zaeed sniped back. "Do we have another goddamn job lined up or what?"

Scowling, and swearing in Italian just to piss off his partner, Vido turned back to his terminal, pulling up the relevant information. "You better not fuck this one up, Massani," he growled. "Yes, I do. This one had better go smoother than our first one, or we won't last one year."

Groaning, he sank down into the other chair in the tiny office cubicle. "Just tell me how long before we goddamn ship out again."

"Three days to get there. Standing around to protect some salarian breeding negotiations." He shrugged with one shoulder. So you'll have to have everyone rounded up to depart," he paused to calculate, "by 1119 station time on Saturday." Vido looked over with a mockingly sweet expression. "Want me to hold your hand to help you through it?" He chuckled when he was flipped off for his trouble.

* * *

To everyone's surprise, the breeding negotiations went off without a hitch, and a week and half of standing around and not shooting at anyone was disappointing, but the money was welcome. This time, Vido was in much greater spirits when Zaeed came back. "Look at this," he said gleefully, spinning his chair around with a set of numbers on the screen.

"Vido, I have no goddamn clue what that is, so just tell me," he muttered, gladly shucking his armor and properly placing it into his locker.

Gleefully, the supply man started highlighting numbers, rattling off economic phrases, until Zaeed threatened him with Jessie (an empty threat, as the assault rifle didn't have a metal ammo block at that moment). "Fine, fine, you simpleton. Here's what we got paid. Here's our expenses. Here's our profit."

He glanced over the numbers, raising one eyebrow slowly. "Twenty one thousand credits in profit? Well." He moved over to his tiny desk, yanking open a drawer, and pulling out a bottle of what was supposedly Shanxi's best whiskey. "Here's to paranoid salarians," he said, grinning as he popped off the lid and took a swig. Vido grabbed the bottle, taking a swig along with him. "Please tell me you can get us more contracts like that."

"I'm working on it, Massani," he said easily, handing back the bottle and sliding back into his chair. "I actually got us hired by an old friend. He tapped at his terminal, and a photo of an asari popped up onto his screen. "Personally, they all look pretty damn close to the same to me, but she remembers us from Caudi's Cock-up."

"Heh. Something to be said for watching the civilians," Zaeed said, capping the bottle after a second drink. "So, what's she want?"

"Eh, some pirate hacker jacked her yacht from Illium. We recover it, we're getting half a mil, minus damages." Vido looked over in annoyance. "Which means no grenades."

Zaeed snorted. "Sure, you lead the goddamn mission then."

"Maybe I should," Vido blustered.

"Maybe you should," Zaeed agreed calmly. "Then I can look for some other juicy contracts."

Vido's mood shifted instantly and he started laughing outrageously. "Massani, the day you find a juicy contract, it'll probably be the end of the fucking galaxy."

Grinning, he held up a finger warningly. "Watch me work," he boasted.


	13. Chapter 13

_Author's Note: I hope nobody thinks I forgot about this story. I didn't ... exactly ... just hit a stumbling block for a while. Then after reading __Death Conquers All__, a Zaeed-death one-shot by The Outlander, it made me think a little more about Zaeed and why he and Vido got into their big disagreement in the first place. It's still coming down the road. In the meantime, enjoy this chapter, and please review!_

* * *

Six months flew by, filled mostly with successful contracts. The Blue Suns were up to eighty people now, enough that Vido had them taking on two or three contracts occasionally, while still giving everyone enough time in between to spend all their pay but not get up to anything stupid. Or at least not _too_ stupid; they did take Pavius off the rolls after that incident with one of Aria's bodyguards. Assuming anyone ever found her body, they might even send it back to whichever turian colony she'd come from.

It was returning from one of these contracts, three hours after landing, when Zaeed was in the middle of his traditional post-success cigar and tequila, when Vido walked in. "So I've been thinking," he said.

Zaeed immediately groaned. "Oh shit, here we go again. I haven't been back on the station long enough to get my goddamn rocks off. Can't this wait another two hours?" He waved the cigar around for emphasis.

"Har har, big shot. I'm serious here." Vido sat down in his own chair, wheeling it over near his partner. "We're getting big enough that we need to start hiring more top people. Guys who can lead squads, take charge of a mission."

"Quit beating around the goddamn bush and just tell me," Zaeed growled, taking another swig from the bottle.

"I've had my eye on a couple of freelancers." Vido paused, waiting for him to swallow. "They're batarian."

Zaeed paused his cigar a centimeter from his lips, sitting up suddenly and jabbing it at the other man. "You're sitting here telling me you want to hire goddamn batarians? When half our goddamn missions end up with a shootout against one batarian slaver ring or another? What kind of fucked up plan is that?"

"It's simple fucking mathematics, Massani," Vido growled, pointing at a terminal. "I know you hate any numbers bigger than the cost of that varren piss you're drinking, so I'll simplify it for you. For what it costs us to hire two people like Rema or Victrus, I can have three batarians just as good, just as skilled. They work cheaper because just like you, nobody else wants to hire them." He jabbed his finger at the screen again. "Christ, Massani, I sit here working with turians after what they did to me. These guys aren't slavers, they left the Hegemony, and I don't take kidnapping contracts."

"Yet," Zaeed continued to complain, swishing around another mouthful of tequila. "How many of these goddamn batarians used to be slavers, huh?"

"Fuck if I know! What difference does it make? They're cheaper, they're just as skilled, they will take our fucking orders or I promise you can shoot them in the knee." Vido leaned back in his chair. "Massani, we could be taking five, six contracts a piece in six more months. And I'm not saying we start hiring exclusively batarians, either, just some."

He pulled deeply on his cigar, holding the smoke in for several seconds before blowing it slowly up past his face. "I get it," he said slowly, matching Vido's pose. "This is about that Eclipse bitch last month. The goddamn asari who thinks we'll never amount to anything because we don't have two centuries of fucking commando training."

"No, it's, well, ok, maybe a little bit. We've run fourteen missions since we started this. Twelve of them were clearly profitable, and one was break-even. We get up to three, four hundred mercs, and we'll be one of the movers and shakers on this station! You know how important that is?"

"Aside from having to pay the head bitch more of our goddamn money, no."

Vido rose from his chair, pacing back and forth. "It means we get our pick of docking bays, priority over the regular smugglers and pirates. People on the station will get the fuck out of our way just when they see the uniform, not because we have weapons out. Admittance to VIP clubs." He stopped pacing, leaning forward in his excitement. "It means we _mean something_ in the Terminus."

"Whoop de fucking doo, Vido," Zaeed muttered around the cigar. "Alright, actually, the docking bay thing sounds promising. But pardon me for goddamn saying, you're not down there in the trenches for most of these missions. You're not in the thick of it with the troops, stuck behind a box while you wait for your _turian_ comrade to get off his scaly butt and flank the goddamn _batarian_ who's trying to stop your paycheck for good." He shook his head, looking down at the last inch of his cigar. "Most of these guys aren't going to like being told to work with a batarian any more than I do." He tossed the cigar into the wastebasket, letting it fitfully smolder against the plastic wrapper from McSwineys.

Two days later, Zaeed stood with the other two nominal squad leaders, Rema and Victrus. Rema had taken the time, in between drinking and shooting her way through four bars, to dye her hair in shades of pink and purple, which clashed horrifically with the Blue Suns armor. If the woman wasn't both a terror on the battlefield, and one of the few Zaeed couldn't beat in hand to hand, he'd have held her down and shaved it off himself. Victrus, as usual, just stood there looking bored and unemotional in a way even most turians couldn't manage, his brilliant tactical mind hidden behind a personality about as exciting as watching paint dry.

Vido opened the door to the warehouse, bringing in two scarred batarians, one of them missing an eye completely, the other just wearing the nicks and lines of bullets and shrapnel that hadn't quite made its target. Rema's pistol was up in a heatbeat, picking the three-eyed one. "What the fuck is this, Santiago?" she snarled.

"Put the pistol down, Rema," he said evenly. When her hand didn't move, he stepped forward, putting one hand on top of the barrel. "This isn't a good way to welcome your fellow Blue Suns recruits."

"We're expected to work with them?" She actually spat at the one with three eyes. "Two months ago this asshole was shooting at me!"

"Indeed, because that's what I was hired to do," the batarian responded, Zaeed's translator giving him a rather posh French accent. "I think you had green hair then, am I right? I shattered your helmet, disarmed you, handcuffed you to a railing." She snarled again, shoving against Vido as he just barely kept her from starting a firefight. "And despite that, the other four members of your team still completed their objective of sabotaging the shuttle engines, and got you out while I was performing damage control. I only got half pay for that, but I don't hold it against you."

"Isn't this a goddamn party," Zaeed muttered under his breath.

"Is this bitch going to shoot us or what?" the other one said, scowling and crossing his arms belligerently. "I thought we were going on missions."

"You are," Vido said loudly, to be heard over Rema's furious screaming as she changed targets. "Damnit, Rema, if you don't calm the fuck down, I'm docking your pay!" She froze for a moment, then shoved the pistol against the magnetic hard point with a harsh clack. "There. Now, these are the two new recruits. Massani and I already talked about it." He glared at Zaeed, who reluctantly nodded. "Meet Cathka and Verik."

"Baron Verik, at your service," the three-eyed one said, sketching a flashy salute.

"Why's a member of the goddamn Hegemony nobility out here working for us?" Zaeed couldn't help snarling.

"Actually, I was exiled in absentia after the secret police failed to arrest me. I was doing gauche things like properly feeding and clothing my slaves, and skipping their mandatory daily beatings." He sighed suddenly, hooking his thumbs into the mesh belt holding a pair of grenades and what was either a really large knife or a small sword. "And I had a few hundred thousand credits in gambling debts."

"We're working with them to do what?" Victrus finally said.

"Got a mission from a human university. They found some Prothean ruins on some planet out here in the Terminus, only there's a batch of Blood Pack nearby, and they're scared to dig with all those scary vorcha and krogan." Vido shook his head. "Buncha pussies. We're getting paid to drive them off. You don't have to kill all of them, just get them to leave."

The turian quietly studied both of the batarians. "Cathka isn't a fighter. Technician, right?" The scarred batarian blinked in surprise. "Good enough. Can we go?"

"Really? That's all?" Verik asked.

"I haven't killed anyone today and I'm really starting to get bored," Victrus answered, already on his way out the door.

The Baron blinked in surprise, glancing nervously at Zaeed, who grinned. "Gotta love his work ethic," he muttered. "Let's get moving."


	14. Chapter 14

_Author's Note: This didn't quite end in the disaster I originally envisioned, but I still think it's pretty good. Of course, after the work day I've had, almost everything sounds good. Let me know what you think in reviews!_

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The mission started off shitty. The planet in question was barely warm enough to qualify as a garden planet, but it was, by a whole half degree. Which, as Verik snottily pointed out, meant they couldn't just drop a couple small rocks on the krogan from orbit and call it a day. No, that meant they had to land, set up enough of a base to assault them from, and get out again. The idiot had then tried to pick a landing zone in the middle of an open plain less than a kilometer away. After Victrus got done bouncing Verik's head off the wall a few times for near-terminal stupidity, Rema set the ship down about ten kilometers away, in a clearing in a grove of crystalline trees.

It took them four hours to get set up. Cathka wanted to unpack the pair of mechs they'd brought along and use them to do all the scutwork, even though it would run down their power supplies. He grumbled non-stop, which was no different than Rema except for the language. Once everything was set up, Zaeed ordered everyone out of the camp, aiming for a nearby hill that would give them line of sight on the Blook Pack camp, so they could plan their assault.

Looking through the optics, Zaeed swore in every language he knew, making sure to include lots of batarian. When Victrus asked him what was wrong, Zaeed just shoved the optics at the turian and stomped back down the hill. There was a full handful of krogan, somewhere around two dozen vorcha, and they had two of those giant armored krogan trucks from Tuchanka. Rema was, for once, less vocal than he was when she finally got her turn.

They all gathered around him at the bottom of the hill when everyone had seen their fill. "So, what now? We call it off and bring in more men?" the batarian Baron asked.

"Fuck no," Zaeed growled. "You have any idea how many goddamn credits we already spent on fuel to get here? We're just going to have to be goddamn careful, that's all."

"What about those Prothean artifacts they're stealing?" Verik asked.

"It wasn't in the mission brief, so I don't goddamn care," Zaeed said. "Either these guys brought in more men since we got the mission, or the eggheads fucking lied to us."

"So how do we start?" Cathka asked, looking over his shoulder back towards the krogan interlopers. "Aren't we on a timetable here?"

"We've got enough time," Victrus said, already marking spots on his map. "If we start right away, that is."

The next two days were spent doing quite a lot of physical labor under the cover of darkness. The sharp orbital tilt was offset by the local fall, but they still hustled from place to place to get everything set up. Once all of the digging and patching and preparation was complete, they began their assault.

The first day was simple enough. They had dug thirty three sniper dens and built ghillie suits for Zaeed and Victrus, the two best with a sniper rifle. Wearing the suits, and with infrared scopes on, they waited for darkness to fall on the third night and opened fire. Three shots a piece, then moving to the next sniper den, their own suits breaking up their outline and dispersing their heat signatures. By the time all the dens were used up, half the vorcha were dead for good, along with one krogan. Naturally, the Blood Pack wouldn't fall for that a second time, but Victrus' strategy depended on it.

The next night, the whole pack of them snuck closer. The explosives had been carefully covered while they were digging their sniper dens, and the pair of rockets were primed with a remote signal. Cathka waited, finger poised over the command, until Zaeed gave him the signal, and he lit off the rockets.

That was when things went wrong again. One of the rockets misfired, sticking in the launcher while the other shot forward. But the launcher had been set for simultaneous fire, and without the counter thrust, the missile that did fire went off target, slamming into the Blood Pack ship, blowing a giant hole in the side. "Goddamn mother fucking cunt sucking hanar!" Zaeed swore at the batarian tech, grabbing him by the collar of his armor. "I thought you said those things were foolproof!"

"I don't know what went wrong!" Cathka protested. "The cold maybe, I don't know!"

"Well, congratulations, you just skull-fucked us all! Now they can't take off, which means we have to get in there and kill every single goddamn one of them!" He put away his sniper rifle, pulling out his trusty assault rifle, already keyed with incendiary rounds. "Get moving, goddamn it."

With the krogan and vorcha panicking on the other side of the camp, firing blindly out towards the dud missile, they snuck in the other side and right up to the hulking krogan trucks. Each one had a pair of heavy assault turrets on each side, ten feet off the ground. Cathka split off from the others, running to the second vehicle, while they went to work.

The tires were thick, synthetic material, designed for broken terrain, and Verik set to work with his sword, actually carving off pieces with his batarian sword. That sabotage wouldn't stop the vehicle from working, but it would slow it down. Rema was busy wiring up microcharges in every gap she could find in the armor, as Victrus grunted from her weight on his shoulders. Zaeed climbed into the personnel compartment, dumping out flammable accelerant over every surface inside, but especially the controls.

He jumped back out when the cans ran out, glad for the filters in his helmet. "Cathka! You goddamn done yet?"

"I've got her hijacked," the batarian snapped back. "Whenever you're ready."

Nodding, Zaeed fired a quick burst into the truck, the incendiary rounds catching the fumes on fire instantly. They ran for the other truck, which roared to life, leaping up the ladder one at a time to scramble into the compartment. The krogan and vorcha had already turned around, and their hasty shots were already pinging off the side of the truck.

"I say, we have them rather well on the run now," Verik said, hanging onto the ladder as Victrus finally ducked inside. A moment later, he fell to the ground, the truck hardly even bumping as the giant tires cruised right over him.

"What the fuck?" Zaeed said, leaning just far enough out the door to find the ladder missing, courtesy of a lucky shot from some Blood Pack member. "Damnit, Cathka, get us the goddamn hell away from here!"

The batarian shouted something turned unintelligible by the engine noise, but they slewed around sideways past a lone tree, then back around a weather-worn stone pillar. Rema was already climbing up to one of the mounted guns, shooting wildly back towards the camp. They were quickly leaving the Blood Pack behind, the other truck a fiery beacon just barely visible through the viewports.

"Oh shit!" Cathka screamed. Zaeed's eyes jerked forward, just barely seeing the dark ribbon of a gully as Cathka futilely fought to turn the vehicle before they hit it. Then it skidding, tilted wildly, and rolled. Zaeed felt himself tossed around like a rag doll as the truck skidded and spun, and finally everything went black.

When he awoke, dawn light was peeking through the narrow viewslits, playing over his face. He sat up carefully, feeling the deep aches that spoke of bruises right down to the bone, but nothing seemed broken yet. The same could not be said for the rest of his group. Rema was bent backwards from the waist, eyes sightlessly staring out the front. Victrus was nowhere to be seen, and the door was missing, which gave him some small hope. Cathka was still strapped into the driver seat, but he was sporting a badly broken arm, probably some broken ribs, too. With the vehicle still on its side, Zaeed couldn't see any way of freeing him yet, so he laboriously climbed out the doorway above him.

From here, he could see Victrus, or the top half of him, at least. Well, most of the top half. He slipped off the side as he tried to climb down, landing heavily in the dirt and just laying there for several moments trying to catch his breath. His sniper rifle was toast, but to his surprise, his assault rifle was about halfway back to the turian's body. When he eventually reached it, it was, to his even greater surprise, still intact.

The baying of varren echoed through the early morning mist, and Zaeed rose slowly to his feet, checking the heat dispersion system. He was still alive, and if the Blood Pack thought they could take down Zaeed Massani while he was on mission, they were going to get the last surprise of their lives.


End file.
